Gasland: Resistance to Drilling in the Marcellus Shale

Posted by admin on 07/26/10

GASLAND: Resistance to drilling in the Marcellus Shale

Originally heard on TUC Radio which airs Monday at 9:30pm on WJFF.

Six weeks into the BP oil disaster President Obama said we need to move to natural gas as a clean fuel alternative. Material from the trailer to the movie GASLAND and voices from DamascusCitizens.org call that into question. They say that chemicals used in the process of hydraulic fracturing and set free in drilling have poisoned water and air. A grassroots movement is resisting the encroachment of gas drilling into Pennsylvania and upstate New York.

They encounter two problems: The fossil fuel industry was exempted from the clean air and safe drinking water act under the Bush administration, and corporations do not need to disclose what chemicals they use. Test results from drinking water in people's homes and from spills and sediment in evaporation ponds at drill sites have now identified 247 out of over 300 chemicals and they include carcinogens, mutagens, and neurotoxins.

Josh Fox, for his movie GASLAND, reports from 24 states on the impacts of chemical hydraulic fracturing. He uncovered water that can be lit on fire right out of the tap, talks to chronically ill residents of drilling areas from many different locations in the US, describes pools of toxic waste that kill cattle and vegetation, and well blowouts and gas explosions.

Natural Gas, in the eyes of oil service corporations such as Halliburton, and the stock market, is in it's tenth year of an unprecedented boom. The US, they say, is the Saudi Arabia of natural gas with 450,000 gas wells already operating in over 32 states and aggressively expanding. This program tries to capture some of the imagination and determination of the local people in this David and Goliath confrontation.

Part ONE: Josh Fox from his trailer for the movie GASLAND and Barbara Arrindell and Joe Levine from Damascus Citizens, interviewed by Fred Pecora, producer at WJFF.